New Ride – The PM Blast

Last Sunday, we discovered what is possibly the best ride in Singapore but unfortunately it may be a little hard to recreate.

Some weeks ago Megan was approached by the Australian High Commission to say that PM Tony Abbott would be in Singapore and would like to go for a bike ride, could ANZA Cycling help.

I’m sure Megan thought “Sure, how hard could it be?” Well pretty hard actually I think.

I won’t go into the details and steal Megan’s coffee shop thunder since she can, as they say, dine off this one for years, but what with accommodating the objectives of the Australian and Singaporean sides, trying to guess how fast the PM could ride, trying to work out if we were or were not going to be stopping at the traffic lights, trying to determine if he was coming with us to Dimbulah, trying to make sure we didn’t drop the PM on any hills (actually no chance of that in hindsight) I think Megan may have bitten off slightly more than she expected.

But we are enormously grateful that she did as on Sunday a group of 18 of us dressed immaculately in this years ANZA kit, 17 on road bikes and Max representing the dark side on his MTB met up outside the St. Regis to greet the PM and his cycling companions.

At this point it was confirmed that the Singapore traffic police would be creating a rolling block for us so there would be no stopping at red lights and with that the PM blast started.

To say that it was fun rolling through at 37km/h without a care for what colour the lights were after all these years of stopping every 50 meters down Orchard Road would be an understatement. We continued round, and with only one minor hiccup when we went the wrong way and lost the police escort, we proceeded to Keppel, Sentosa and back to Cantonament before heading back to the St. Regis. 30km in total, average 35km/h and it was possibly the most fun I’ve had on a bike in Singapore.

Topped off with a quick coffee with the PM and his team, and it has to be said, St. Regis makes great coffee, Dimbulah may have to up their game or club breakfast could be moved again 🙂